AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Two of Ronsard’s men came around the corner. Their gazes locked immediately on John; he was the prime target of their hunt. They saw the pistol in his hand, saw him moving toward Ronsard. Niema knew, in a nanosecond of stark vision, what was going to happen. She saw their weapons train on him. He was momentarily too focused on Ronsard to react as quickly as he normally would have.
She didn’t hear herself scream, a hoarse sound of rage and terror. She didn’t know she was moving, didn’t feel her hand holding the pistol as it began to rise. All she could hear was her heartbeat, slow and ponderous, as if it pumped molasses instead of blood. All she knew was—not again. She couldn’t watch him die. She couldn’t.
There was a distant roar. A blue haze of gun smoke. The stench of cordite burning her nostrils. The buck of the weapon in her hand as she fired, and kept firing. A crushing force hit her, knocked her down. She tried to stagger to her feet, but her legs wouldn’t work. She fired again.
Someone else was shooting, she thought. There was a deeper roar . . . wasn’t there? John. Yes, John was shooting. Good. He was still alive. . . .
The lights seemed to go out, though maybe not. She was
n’t certain. There was a lot of formless noise that gradually reshaped itself into words. Something was tugging at her, and it hurt worse than anything she’d ever felt in her life, pain so sharp and all-consuming she almost couldn’t breathe.
“—damn you, don’t you die on me,” John was raging as he tore at her clothes. “Do you hear? Don’t you god damn die on me.”
John rarely swore, she thought, fighting through the pain; he must be really upset. What on earth had happened?
She was hurt. She remembered now, remembered that crushing blow that knocked her down. Something had hit her.
Shot. She’d been shot. So this was what it felt like. It was worse than she had ever imagined.
“Don’t die,” John was snarling as he pressed down hard on her side.
She wet her lips, and managed to say, “I might not, if you’ll hurry and get help.”
His head jerked around and he stared at her. His pupils were pinpoints of shock, his face white and strained. “Just hold on,” he said roughly. “I’ll stop the bleeding.” He looked beyond her, and his expression was savage. “You’d better use all the influence you have and get the best doctors in Europe, Ronsard,” he said in a low, guttural tone, “because if she dies, I’ll fillet you into fish bait.”
Washington, D.C., three weeks later
Niema carefully got out of bed and made her way over to the lone chair in the hospital room. Her legs were steadier, she was walking more every day now, though “more” in this case meant a few minutes longer, not any great distance. She had come to hate that bed, though, and was spending as much time as she could in the chair. Sitting in a chair made her feel less like an invalid.
The last IV drip had come out that morning. She was scheduled to be dismissed from the hospital the next day. She would complete her recovery at home; Frank Vinay had visited and said it had been arranged for her to have help at home until she was strong enough to manage by herself again.
Being home again would be nice, she thought. Excitement was one thing, but a woman needed peace and quiet when she was recovering from a gunshot wound. Too much of the past three weeks was a blur, at best, or a huge blank forever lost from her memory She vaguely remembered being in intensive care in some hospital in France. Louis Ronsard might have been there. He had held her hand once, she thought.
Then she had been flown from France to the States, back to D.C., and brought here. She didn’t remember the flight at all, but the nurses told her that was what had happened. She had gone to sleep in France and woke up in D.C. That was enough to disorient anyone.
Every time she surfaced it had been to incredible pain, but she had stopped taking any painkiller a week ago, when she was moved out of intensive care into a regular room. The first couple of days had been rough, but after that every day had been easier.
The last time she’d seen John was when she’d been lying in that narrow, deadend street in Nice. He’d had to disappear, of course. He couldn’t hang around, either as Joseph Temple or John Medina. She hadn’t asked Mr. Vinay about him, either. John would either show up, or he wouldn’t.
Only a small lamp was on in the room; after the bright lights of intensive care shining on her day and night, she wanted only dim lights now. She turned on the radio to an instrumental station and turned the volume low. Easing back in the chair, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift with the music.
She didn’t hear any strange noise or feel a draft from the door opening, but slowly she became aware of John’s presence. She opened her eyes and smiled at him, not at all surprised to find him standing in the shadows across the room.
“Finally,” she said, holding out her hand to him.
He came to her so silently he might have been drifting on smoke, his gaze moving hungrily over her, darkening with pain as he catalogued each pound she had lost. He cupped her face, rubbing his thumb over her bloodless cheek as he bent down and lightly pressed his mouth to hers. She put her hand on the back of his neck, something in her easing as she felt him warm and vital under her touch.
“I couldn’t stay away any longer,” he said in a low, rough tone. “Frank kept me informed, but I—it wasn’t the same as being here.”
“I understood.” She tried to stroke away the new lines that bracketed his mouth.
“When you go home tomorrow, I’ll be there.”
“Someone is staying with me—”
“I know. I’m the someone.” He crouched down in front of her and folded her hand in his.
“Good. You can help me get back on my feet. The physical therapists here won’t let me do as much as I need to be doing.”
